common medlar

Photo: Unknown — CC BY-SA 2.0 · source

Survives zone 5 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

⚠ Must be BLETTED (flesh browns and softens) — then like apple butter, dates and wine.

Hardiness

Zone 5–8

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Late Oct–Nov, then BLET 2–3 weeks in store

Mature size

Small tree 3–5 m; containerable

Light

Full sun to partial

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

South-west Asia and south-east Europe — north-east Turkey, the Caucasus and northern Iran. The Greeks and Romans carried it west, and the apparently wild medlars of southern and central Europe are mostly long-established escapes rather than native populations.

Status

Cultivated

Years to fruit

3–4 yrs grafted

Growth speed

Slow

Spacing

400 cm (157 in) apart — about 16 m² (172 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate and large for the size of the tree: oblong to lance-shaped 8–15 cm, dull dark green, downy beneath, on very short stalks, turning russet and gold late in autumn.

Root system

Shallow and fibrous, and in practice the rootstock's — quince stock gives a smaller, earlier-bearing tree, hawthorn stock a more vigorous one that copes with heavy clay, and pear stock the largest. Own-rooted seedlings root deeper but are slow to come into bearing.

Fruit description

A russet-brown pome 2–5 cm with a wide open eye ringed by five long persistent sepals — the flared hollow that made the fruit a byword for oddity in English. Rock-hard and inedible straight off the tree: it must be bletted, left in a cool store two to three weeks until the flesh browns and softens to something like thick apple butter, when it tastes of dates, cinnamon and wine.

Propagation

Grafting or budding is the usual route — onto quince for a smaller, earlier tree, hawthorn for heavy or difficult soils, pear for vigour. Seed can take eighteen months to germinate and does not come true.

Pollination

SELF-FERTILE

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.